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October 31, 2009

Ghosts of Naval Air

I thought I dedicate this Halloween post to a little paranormal in our Aviation Navy. Most Tailhookers are not too concerned with ‘Things that go bump in the night”… cuz usually it’s us!

However there are a number of haunting tales told about sightings of strange humanesque shapes walking the passageways of long retired flattops like the Oriskany, the Midway and many others. However probably the most famous Ghost of an Aircraft Carrier is “Charly” the well mannered, well dressed former sailor of the USS Lexington who perished in a Kamikaze attack on Halloween night 1944 off the coast of the Philippines .

[Charly] - a white-uniformed, blue-eyed young seaman who has been known to tell the tales of the ship to museum visitors who have come to tour her. Only this tour guide is a ghost.

Staff of the floating museum call him "Charly". Visitors have often called him helpful. But whatever you call him, the neatly-dressed sailor in white is not part of the museum staff, but reportedly a former crew member that simply failed to depart the ship after giving up his life…

On a Corpus Christi Caller-Times web site, as many as 200 visitors to the museum have reported encounters with Charly. Without exception, the reports indicate the ghostly seaman is a "polite young man" that seems to share a great deal of information about the Lexington's engine room far below deck.

Charly is rumored to primarily frequent the engine spaces and the lower decks of the ship known to the Japanese as “The Gray Ghost” (due to the Japanese, having mistakenly thought they had sunk her no fewer than four times, yet she kept returning).

Charly has become so much of an accepted part of the Lexington’s lore that even a web cam has been installed in the engine spaces. In one now infamous image taken by this camera, one can possibly make out what appears to be a crewman standing in space.

Many visitors to the ship claim to this day feeling the presence of numerous spirits as they tour the decks.

Visitors say they feel a cold chill when they pass the room and one claimed to have seen something moving around in the darkness of the empty engine room. Another said he saw the engineer’s ghost looking intently at the engine as though trying to fix something.

Others have told stories of feeling something hurriedly push past them, hearing footsteps in the halls, being in the bathroom when the lights turned on and off by themselves and being in bed and feeling the covers beging tugged off them.

Recently, some cadets were staying overnight on the USS Lexington. They got up during the night and ran around the ship on a dare. Running through the engine room, they came face to face with the ghost of the dead crewman.

I’ll leave you all with that image, wishing you all a fun, safe, and Happy Halloween!

If you have any navy ghost stories you’d like to share please feel free to add them to the comments, just click “Comment” below and have at it.